Travel with art in Russia lecture, George Heard Hamilton, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1967.

Travel with art in Russia lecture, George Heard Hamilton, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1967.

Creator

Baltimore Museum of Art;

Subject

Baltimore Museum of Art; Art, Russian;

Description

May 23, 1967 illustrated lecture at The Baltimore Museum of Art about art in Russia by George Heard Hamilton, Director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute of Williamstown, Massachusetts. Dr. Hamilton was author of "The Art and Architecture of Russia", art historian, former professor of art at Yale University, and served as an associate curator at the Walters Art Gallery from 1934 to 1936. Dr. Hamilton's lecture called attention to the arts of architecture, painting and sculpture as they had been created in the territories of European Russia by the Russian people.

Transcript

As a particular pertinence of I think many of you are aware which means not only is art in Russia a very relevant subject for a number of very relevant reasons these days but also because of a tour fans for this autumn by the museum to Russia.
Dr. George Heard Hamilton who is a noted speaker and noted art historian here tonight former professor at Yale. And now the director of the Sterling -- by the title of this museum and thank God I don't have to be the director of that Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is a great museum and I am sure some of you have visited this relatively new museum and I urge you to do so if you have not.
I also urge as a devoted son of Williams College myself not to tell you see a much smaller, a much less (inaudible 01:27) while you are there take a deep breath and look out at the mountain. Dr. Hamilton who have been at the museum on previous occasions as you may recall most recently in connection with the work exhibition of Marcel Duchamp has served also as an associate curator of (inaudible 1:45) so he is very much at home in Baltimore. He taught as a professor at Yale until 1956 and was named as co-professor there in that year and 10 years later was appointed to his present post in Williamstown. Speaking of the Russian people he says on his definitive work in his thought on the Art and Architecture of Russia in a Pelican series.
I have sought not to emphasize the likeness or unlikeness of Russian art to similar or contemporary expressions in Western Europe. I have tried to explain the characteristic elements as they have appeared in time and to indicate how influences from outside Russia may have helped to shape such forms. I might add that the vocabulary is pure Yale. I contend because along with Catherine the Great that Russia is a European State, and I have tried to explain Russian art in the terms used for the study which we understand of European art. I am sure you are all aware of our fall tour of the Soviet Union, that's a little pretentious to call upon but a tour which will go to learning (inaudible 3:16) and the churches of the Armenia and some parts of Georgia and Samarkand among the cities of (inaudible 3:32). This lecture is then partly intended to provide background for those who are going on the tour but also I am sure I know it would be of interest to those of you who are interested in just focus on the history and the cultural heritage of Russia had sought. It's a pleasure to introduce our old friend Dr. George Heard Hamilton.
Thank you Mr. Parker and I am afraid you have the title of this lecture wrong. You say it's a traveling with the art to Russia but your name is Chuck and mine is George. Now who are these two find out later. My thoughts will naturally obtain seeming to those of you who are going on this trip which promises from the itinerary to be I am sure one of the most totally interesting experiences you could possibly have. It looks exhausting and you will be tired but keep going because you will never be there again such place Samarkand and Tashkent. I can't talk to you about Armenia nor Heather Ashrae as Mr. Parkers indicated to have some of great night think of Russia as a European state by which I meant only that to even the most seemingly outlanders and unusual forms of Russian art and architecture can be understood if we know if we have a general knowledge of what has happened to New York. And for that reason I concentrated my own interest upon the development of the Russian thought of the Russian nation. And that is what I would like to show you think evening. Now those of you who have never been there may perhaps find yourselves in Russia sometime after all if the direct air links are made possible. It will be much easier for people to go and after my own experience is there I am convinced that it is the most enlightening and illuminating experience one can have in terms of the contemporary political world.
You learn to understand especially some of the problems that the Russian people have faced and you discover that they are not so very different from ourselves even though it is rather difficult to make oneself understood or to understand them. Now by way of a preference let me just say that one must make statement rather broad generalization if you are going to study in any way the history of architecture which is really the main thread of this evening's discourse over a thousand years in time from 988 when Russia, Kievan Russia, the princess of Kiev on the Dnieper River accepted Christianity. The time in 1917 when the roman of dynasty was overthrown and the Union of the Socialist Soviet Republic was proclaimed.
And that is a very arbitrary stopping for it. It looks neat at 1917 with that rather desperate revolution but it is quite as arbitrary as the adoption of Christianity in 988 that's enables the historian to create a slice of time which you can examine because as you will discover when you are in Russia the monuments of the imperial and Tsarist past are very much a part of the Russian people or the Soviet people historical experience, the historical imagination. And when I was there in 1964 and some of the people I was with said I thought that they murdered Tsar therefore why do they go to such extent to restore his palaces and it is rather a puzzle when you realize that tremendous amount of time ingenuity and money which has gone into the restoration of the monument which was so grievously was demolished in the war with Germany in 1941 - 1945 until you realize that they did not cut themselves off in 1917 from being Russians. They became Soviets but that is a political term that's the way we became republicans in 1789.
And we did not in anyway cut ourselves off from our colonial path as a matter of fact we go to great trouble to preserve as Williamsburg or recreate the imagery part we once were under those hated and autocratic monarchs, the kings of England. So that if one takes that thought seriously then one realizes how much a very meaningful to the Russian people these symbols of ancient splendor and the way religious cultures they call it which is no longer useful to them or now this long length of time has to be divided up into manageable units and it falls rather nicely into four areas. The Russian nation began at Kiev on the lower Dnieper River what is now called the Ukraine. In the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th centuries and therein 988 Prince ask the Rick Priest to come and convert the people. And they are the first great church was build the Church of Santa Sophia, which is still in existence.
Now those of you who are going on this trip are not going to Kiev and quite frankly you are not missing too much because the city was grievously destroyed by the dragons, and many of the most beautiful monuments were deliberately blown up. I was standing at a heap of rubble which had been at the Church of Saint Michael. Well this is 11th Century Fresco and in my own imagination about this awful loss and the old gentleman staggered up and on a stick and pointed to it and made the rather obscure remark Gitler, Gitler. And then I remember that there is no "H" in the Russian language what he was trying to tell me was, Hitler had done this and it was Nazi colonel who declared this church to be blown up just before the Nazis had to leave.
Well this is all part of the terrible story of those days which we are not so very long ago and the city itself has been rebuilt. I will show you one slide and its style which looks more like the outskirts of Los Angeles that anything I have seen outside the outskirts of Los Angeles, but that's why you are not missing perhaps too much. But it is the cradle of the Russian culture from then until 1240 when the Mongols destroyed the city. The Mongol invasion the Tartars who came from central Asia and who ruled in Russia until they were finally chased out in the middle of the 16th century under the reign of Ivan IV or Ivan the Terrible, truly terrible person but a very great Tsar in many ways. Meanwhile the Russian power had been reestablished in Moscow under the great Princess of Kiev who took in the early 15th century the title of Tsar in the sort of Cyrillic and Greek form. The rulers of Kiev of great princess, the rulers of Muscatine were Tsar and they rule there until 1696. Then with the accession of Peter the Great the capital was moved to Leningrad a city which was the present Leningrad it was found with St. Petersburg in 1703 quite a good while after Boston and it was there that from 1696 until 1917 the Roman reigned as emperors, imperator using the Latin title indicating their affiliations with the west St. Petersburg had been founded as Russia's window to the west because it looked out on the Gulf of Finland leading into the Baltic and so even in the depths of winter the boats could rather with some difficulty make their way to the warmer waters of western Europe.
That imperial Russian period came to an end with the revolution and it has been followed by the soviet period since 1917 with which I do not, which I cannot discuss with you this evening because there isn't time and artistically it represents an entirely different state of affairs which has not so much to do with the definition of a Russian architectural style. And now may I have the first slide, if you are staying in the national hotel in Moscow and which is there to the, in the left background you will not as these people are going step out into this square but who will use underground passageways to get from here to the Kremlin in Red Square which lies directly behind this as we are looking at this photograph. There is a good restaurant at the top of that hotel there on the right, the marvelous beautiful city. And when you are there you may feel that you are really in another imitation of western modern urban metropolis which is what it is Moscow is a big busy city great many people, great many traffic spread subway system, taxi cabs if you can get them all this and that, but if you were to stand in the restaurant of the hotel which is on the second floor and look out those windows there in the back to the left this is the view which you would have which is approximately that which Lenon from the room in which he died or before he died you would be looking toward the Kremlin wall which is in the right foreground that yellow building is a 19th century office building erected inside the Kremlin.
The building on the left is the historical museum in 1855 of 19th century structure which I will talk about a little later and between the church of Saint Basil the Blessed the most startling the idiosyncratic of all Russian monuments one which is baffled and bewildered western tourist since the late 16th century when it was constructed until the present day, but it is I will try to show you is within the terms of the Russian architectural development not quite so peculiar as it looks. These photographs were taken by professor Frederick Feldman of Williams College just 10 years ago. The scene has changed only in two respects, one that there is more traffic on the streets and secondly that off in the left are rising very tall and very ugly office buildings and hotels such as a going up in every capital city around the world, Russia has no monopoly upon banality of contemporary urban developments or if you were in Kiev you and you see why I suggested this resemblance to Brentwood outside Los Angeles you would find this avenue of apartment houses which has gone up since the war Germans having laid it in ruins in a style which is rather unusual. I will wait and you will say you have never seen such dreary apartment houses blocks of flats as you will find in Moscow and Leningrad and they are safely built in an extra ordinarily utilitarian style.
But part of is due to the tremendous pressure to provide the Russian people with sufficient living space. They still do not have you know one room per person by any means at all and therefore they must make haste in the Ukraine where they are very proud of not being Russians but Ukrainians and where their language is a little different from the Russian language. The apartment houses are more exuberant I don't know whether they are more luxurious as I was never asked inside but they are covered with ornament and balconies and some seem sort of Spanish and others Moorish and everything but proletarian and it gives us a sense of sort of architectural voluptuousness which is very strange but since those of you going there will get there shall not dwell on that. But take you to the shores of the Dnieper here, the restaurant looking out over this great river which flows from the depth of the woodland area in the north as coming out of the marshes of western Russia and finally reaches the Black Sea it was up this river that the Greeks came from Byzantium and bringing not only objects to trade apparently finally manufactured ways ceramics, silver, ivory paintings and so on but also of course to get the Russian furs and timber and other woodland products which were being brought down the river often escorted by the Norsemen from Scandinavia and so called regent who have been called in by the (inaudible 18:17) to put some order into their rather scattered community the settlements up and down the river. And it would their at Kiev where the rapids just above the rapids which were rather has it in navigation, but the river widens out that the city was founded on the banks of the river in the late 9th or early 10th centuries the statue holding cross is in commemoration of the thousandth anniversary of the Christianization of Russia and it was erected in 1898.
In the cliff itself was the famous Pechersky monastery with the famous caves which unfortunately no longer open to the public and the monastery was another one of the losses suffered in the last war, but it was in this city that the first and greatest church of Russian Christian was then erecting and one which made its empress felt upon all subsequent masonry architecture in ancient Russia. This church was based upon the Greek model of the churches in Constantinople particularly with the higher superior there in mind and in this reconstruction which is perhaps as accurate as it is possible to be with the evidence rather like Professor Kenneth Konan shows us the central apse with the two apses of the flanking aisle. And then the two additional lower aisle with the flat roof over the outer one which were rather unusual feet for this great church, which they have been added in the 12th century, the church was dedicated in 1037. So it is comparable you see a Romanesque Cathedral at Basilica in Western Europe. It was on those flaps terraces that the inhabitants the Citizens of Kiev took refuge in 1214 when Mongols proceeds and later invaded the city.
In the 17th century the church was fallen into what could be described as wrecked and ruined and it was so drawn by Dutch visitor from the west, these are the outer aisle showing the interior flying buttresses, not a rather unusual feature. But in the 17th century when the Ukraine was under the dominance of Poland, under the Sovereignty of Poland the church was rebuilt in this fashion. The original masonry survived in those dark portions of the walls. Whatever you see there as quite is either later as that buttresses to shore up the fabric or it stucco and whitewash over the original foundation. The whole upper part of the church which gives it so fantastic in appearance now is best described as Polish Baroque. And it is literally more like the churches one season to countryside around Warsaw or Krakow then it is Russian. But if we can think this church back to its original scheme that we could place over the cylinders or the drums which crown the roofs the low flat Byzantine domes which they originally had on the interior is one of the finest surviving mosaics, which shows in the apse itself the figure of the Praying Virgin, the virgin Orans with her hands raised in prayer in that fashion. She is only inferior outside of ancient reads itself Byzantine greets to the virgin and Marinol and Tortola but she is very fine indeed. Below is the most unusual representation of the Christ celebrating the Eucharistic Apostles twice There it is again the center as the table of the last supper -- came out over it.
If one can, if one is deeply interested in Byzantine Mosaics one must to make the trip to Kiev to see this which is one of the late and very fine one, it is in Greek, you see it was made by Greek workman plus as the church was probably build by Greeks. Now if you went up the Dnieper and then by portage through the lakes and marches into the far north to North Gorod but those of you who are going to Russia will go on the date excursion from Leningrad you would see the second grade 11th century church in Russia second grade Romanesque monument, church of the holy wisdom saying vocable. The church of Santa Sophia then very much like the one in the south in so far as the projection of the apses on the exterior is concerned and the tall drums over the various spaces inside the church usually these churches are build on a Greek cross plan which gives you a central dome and then four smaller domes over the other four spaces, although they may add additional one that the church is larger.
But there is a difference here, it is much taller, it is much more severe. It speaks of a for northern atmosphere and climate of less gracious perhaps way of life as well as means for our expenditure and architectures construction is narrow inside, it is painted, it has no mosaics and we are much closer to something which is more natively Russian. It is the Greek mode becoming adapted to the local scene. Now this mode found its most perhaps its most perfect exemplification in the two small town of Vladimir and Suzdal which is somewhat to the north east of the Moscow. And it is sometimes possible to go there, so that sometimes not encourage travel there, but if you insist you can go and unfortunately it's rather long day trip and one has to spent the night.
I have not been myself on hotel leave something to be desired but if you get there you find the church of the Assumption of the Virgin or to put it properly in Russian terms, terms of the Russian Orthodox Church. Church of the Dormition of the Virgin, Uspenski church. Because in the Russian liturgy it is the death of the virgin and the passing of her soul into the hands of the Christ which is celebrated for other than her bodily ascension as the assumption if we know from western liturgy and art. This church of the later early 12th century is now well perhaps you can just feel it now the Greek style has become a home much smaller, the interior spaces are rather cramped but it preserves the verticality, it preserves the beautiful rhythmic old expression of the interior vaulting in the arcades of the exterior, because the vaults are covered on the exterior only by the tiles. They have cement or stone construction inside and don't need an elaborate protection as wooden roof would.
And then at the top of these walls which appears by those very elegant tall narrow windows are these corbel tables in the technical terms all these arcades little arches supported on slanted collimates which create a very handsome decorative treatment of the exterior. Here is the early form of the crowning element Cupola or the dome, though it's not strictly a dome of course, because it does not crown so largest space which prevailed in Russia from the 11th or 12th early 13th centuries it's called the helmet shaped dome and it grows out of the very low Byzantine saucer dome. That is succeeded. In the 16th and 17th centuries by the bulbous dome, the onion shaped dome, which is usually what it considered more characteristically Russian but those of you who have traveled in southern and Eastern Europe know can be found as part of south west is in Munich on the towers of the Frauenkirche there and throughout the pictures of Bohemia, Moravia, and Carpathians, and Hungary and so on. It is a puzzle which the archeologist have not yet solved as far as the origin of this dome, whether it is due to the desire of throw the snow and ice in the winter time nights in winter time melting the water is far from the lower roof is possible or whether it has a more as the epic origin since it is found in profile on certain Indian domes in remote antiquity is something which is still read in the midst time whether we will ever discover the reasons for it seems problematical at the moment.
The most perfect example in Russian archeologist opinion of this kind of Kiev architecture this small church of the version of Whale the version of Polcroft at on Nero, the river Nero near Vladimir. This was often painted in the later 19th century standing there above the near and isolated in the wide spreading of flat lands of central Russia, it stood as an emblem of the beauty and the purity of the Russian religious experience, and it is I think if one studies carefully if one looks long at the ordinance of facades and so on, very beautifully balanced and composed. There is a harmony here to the proportions. There is a rightness in the adjustment of the detail or carved detailed of the plain surfaces which admits no correction or improvement which after all along the ways to discover whether what we are looking at is a great work of art or not tiny little church but a jewel of its kind and I have talked about it at some length. So wanted to keep its image in your mind as indeed the Russian great Prince of Moscow kept it in mind when after the Tartars or the Mongols have been thrown back to Kazan and lower Volga and the central heartland of European Russia was relatively safe. They were able to build within the confines of the Kremlin in Moscow a series of churches which would demonstrate the stability and power of the revived Russian sovereignty. And in the middle of the 15th century great Prince of Moscow Bezel married Zoe Paleologos who is a niece of the last emperor of Constantinople that heroic who died on the walls trying to save last of Rome from the Turks. She had been sent to Italy early on for her education by her uncle and had been brought up in Rome with the (inaudible 30:37) and was acquainted with the latest development in the art of renaissance and this was the middle of the Crawford Chanto.
How she was ever persuaded to marry anybody and move so far away from Italy is a mystery but so she did. Taking with her to Moscow a number of Italian artisans trained in skilled with crafts of renaissance architecture. Who with their relations in Italy their knowledge of contemporary practices, so able to summon others, so when her husband and his successes decided to rebuild the walls of the Kremlin and to create new monuments within it there is knowledge of Italian architecture which came an extremely handling. Because the Russians have built only on a very small scale because the Greek tradition had died out towards the end of the 11th century their churches have gotten smaller rather than larger, so there were no engineers which they are capable of undertaking, they are very complex fortifications of the Kremlin. Because these are double and triple cracking walls riddled with internal and secret passageways insofar as we could held because obviously the Russians and Soviet governance have never published the plan with Kremlin fortification but from all the surviving accounts we know that which took quite a bit doing it even to get pass the guards to get into the Kremlin in the middle ages in modern times. So that engineers came from Italy to do that which gives this great sweep of wall with its tower a very Italian look, it looks North Italian like the walls of the Castillo Sforzesco in Milan and so on. So you would not be mistaken if you think to detect here or something which looks little familiar. The tops of the tower have been frequently renewed. They were burned off every time there has been any trouble number of them suffered severely in 1812 at the time of Napoleon architecture in Moscow some of them rebuild in the 19th century and so on using gothic style.
But I will show you one of the more important original 17th century ones which survived intact. Now it was here and remember that Kremlin does not so crumbled and Russian does not ipso facto mean a place of secret terror. It means a fortified hilltop by Acropolis there is a Kremlin in Krakow or there is a Kremlin in frog that they go back slightly different names. And it was here in the heart of the city as in any western city where the prince or ruler had his residence that the palace was built and the principle source, the principle protective spot to which the people might also common in times of drastic emergencies. The churches which were built here with the little church of annunciation in the 1480s slightly before that the cathedral not very large, great only in artistic quality of the assumption and in 1505 the churches of St. Michael the Archangel which have an Italian architect.
Let me show you those churches now ignoring or disregarding for the moment the other building here is the corner of the Kremlin wall and I think you can see that there is a disjunction between the lower severe Italian part in this upper sort of pseudo Medieval section which has been added but it is a very handsome fortification indeed. And I would be interested in knowing after you have been there and had seen that red illuminated stars the red star of course is the symbol of Russian at the top of those towers for once crown with guilt crosses if you don't find them surprisingly beautiful great red star and all of those tower shine out in the rain and the fog and the midst all night long into the kind of internal vigilance over the city and the country.
Now here is the little church of the annunciation very small which was built by masters who came from the west or the south northwest North Gorod and who have used rather native type of construction based on timber churches probably far these very elaborate superimposed arches who see there is a arch there and another one there and other churches can have more series those are called (inaudible 35:22) after the carved or rather molded head rest which Russian women wore in the middle ages and that land is that rather old fashioned and primitive appearance. This was the marriage church yes the marriage church of the Russian Tsar tiny and it is impossible for more than the immediate families newspaper say, and the higher members of the court to get inside it. It is now a small museum of icons and you will have one of the most gratifying experiences if you will take the trouble to go by yourselves or with your friends or as a group, perhaps late some afternoon when are tired and weary and just sit down and look at these beautiful, beautiful paintings hanging in the interior of this tiny church. I will show you in interior in the moment. Now across from that is the more important Cathedral of the Assumption of Uspensky, which was build after 15 more constructions going on in the 70s by a man name Aristotle Fioravanti from Milan, an Italian summoned by the great prince and given the commission which expressly required him to imitate the churches of Vladimir and Suzdal. In other words, he was to revive in the heart of the new Muscatine power. The ancestral images, the architectural images as those have been developed out of the Kiev tradition. This is a very difficult thing for an Italian to do because he had not been brought up in that tradition and it is all more remarkable that he made of it essentially very handsome beautiful church, plain white stone, corbel table running across the mid-height of vaults expressed on the exterior and the curbed arches the fine relation and the proportion of cylindrical drums to the welcome cells and the domes which have been renewed in modern times in the more handsome and appropriate style and bulbous domes of the 16th and 17th centuries.
There is evidence here of a fine Italian hand in this church because the proportions of the wall spaces, the bays, their width to their height and so on betray certain complicated mathematical relationships which are not just rule of thumb. In other ways, the intellectual attitude toward architecture proportions which have been developed so much in the early 15th century by Laticio Alberti in Italy have been developed here in an entirely Russian idiom. The third approach hired by the other two is this church was Saint Michael the Archangle, the Alovisio Novi also from Northern Italy who uses the Kievan and Suzdalian prototype but adds all kinds of elements out of the stocking trade of the Italian architect of 17th century including (inaudible 38:50) which we find not only in architecture but in the Italian renaissance culture which run around the sides. His sense of proportions in the (inaudible 38:59) and the exterior of the church seems over-charged with ornament or the heavy little growth. It is however a great historical interest because inside or the tombs of the Romanovs and the earlier Kievan dynasty before them, the Romanovs took over after the death of Boris Godunov in the early 17th Century and including the tomb of Ivan the Terrible and so there is plenty to see and meditate God in this church although it is not a very great architectural distinction.
Here it is in color, there are those of shell niches at the top which you have see, there is a little church of the enunciation and the tribal church and the marriage church with its domes of newly gild since the last war, shining way that beautifully and then here to the right is one of the important remains of the palace of he Tsars, very little domestic or secular architecture survives which is also proved in Western Europe where the secular buildings when they decayed they were rebuilt in the modern style or has the churches having the sanctity of tradition behind them are more likely than not preserved. This is so called facade palace the ground of Italian palata because the exterior consistent carved stone and the geometrical faceting reminiscent again the north Italian architecture incited is one of the great historic rooms of the Kremlin. There is another view from the steps of the Uspenski Cathedral with the domes of the private chapel of the Tsar Avena and her princesses and may be some waiting there. I want to take you inside it as this is a very dark line and what you are looking at is the feeling reflected in the polished floor.
Well, indeed it's all 19th centuries, I am sorry to tell you it's been repainted in a vulgar style in the late 19th century. And it is really pleasant to see it or the Soviets took away a buffet which ran around all signs of the central column which support it the vault on which the imperial plate, not the imperial plate the Tsar plate of great silver and gold vessels where displayed in the 19th Century. Here it is in the manuscript illustration of the late 16th Century showing an audience of the foreign ambassador with the Tsar. This might even be doubt which was according to the emissary of Queen Elizabeth the First of England whose hand was asked in marriage by Ivan the Terrible would have been undoubtedly one of the most interesting matches in the history. But Elizabeth declined, she had enough on her hands in London. The ambassador's account and those of other English merchants and diplomats who visited London and Moscow in the late 16th and 17th Century are fascinating because they all described the extreme inconvenience to which they were put having to wait days or months to be received by the Tsar and a sense of uncertainty and indefiniteness, they were detained in their quarters, they were not allowed to move freely in the city. And then the reception in the Kremlin was fraught with hazard as they were taken through one gate after another which of course each one was locked behind them as they pass through and then finally they came into the awful and wedded presents of this servant who seems more eastern despot than a western ruler.
He noticed that the floor is covered with beautiful Turkey carpets which can be considered perhaps Kremlin spoil which Ivan had won when he defeated the Tartars of Kazan and cashed him out of his realm. Now of the other rooms in the Kremlin which one visits I am afraid they have something of that terribly stagy which may be there forever life on this. They do look that so many historical monuments have all like -- where you know the furniture is not really original such as this and where they have been all sort of fixed up too often. I have that feeling with these all put together kind of impresses but once impressive was the very small size of the rooms. There was very little comfort in the Terem Palace in the heart of Kremlin apparently in the 15th and 16th centuries. Now I talked a quite while about masonry architecture, I would like to show you something else before they build the church in North Gorod, there was an earlier church thrown up at the very end of the 10th century or early 11th Century which is described just having 13 jackie, which means upper parts.
Well, if they have been domes they probably would have Santo in upper parts they mean wooden roofs. And if so this was the first large extensive structure built of wood. Wood was actually by far they preferred building material as for instance it is in our New England where most of the buildings even today in the country resonate on the wood not of brick or stone because stone in Russia was hard to fine, often had to be transported at great distances but wood they all around especially in the north country. And here in this view, Moscow in the 17th Century you can see how people were living and what looked like very much like our own cabins. They were made up timber the end notched which was sold in standard sizes. This is very interesting because the temporary architects today were consent with pre fabrication because on the outskirts of any town there was the timber merchant who sold enough logs, ready cut the size and the number of sizes you want in order to build a house. And since these towns are always burning down this is a great convenience because you could build your house again in two days from just fitting it together. And you have therefore an obviously fantastic knowledge of the nature of wood and what can be done with it.
And in the countryside in those of northern woods and the water country, the lake country, the rivers and so on and where do we these villages with in the center the church with its single jackie, it's roof towering up. There is a little village lost in the debts of Northern Russia as seen by European traveler in the 17th Century and he has a companion drawing which shows the stone church such as the time of the type which we have been looking at. I am showing you now the wooden one and an actual wooden structure of the developed type as well as that had been developed perhaps in time in the memorial but as it reached this perfection form here is the church of Penilava in 1600 which is in Northern Russia. You will not see these churches except in so far some of them have reconstructed in an architect for museum in Moscow and then monastery of th Don, The Donskoi Monastery architectural museum. I don't notice that that is down in your itinerary, you are to visit the Novel Diavichi Monastery. It shows a very beautiful masonry church and a very romantic picture at the neglected cemetery. But I don't know if the in tourist will let you go through the domed monastery to see the examples of architecture which have been collected there in a very fine architectural environment.
And part of this church as you see that it has an octagonal main body actually an octagonal room inside which is not much higher within than the roof of the porch, that's all empty space. It would be too difficult to heat that in winter anyway. But the church is prolonged upwards and to give it greater height, greater dominance, greater spiritual prestige, you see the logs which are cut and then the knotted at the ends and put together, very easily with logs of no great length you can get quite an octagonal space inside and then the whole is crown with this pyramidal roof so-called tent roof. Now the word tent in Russian is shater which is one of the Mongol words tartar word, which was the end of the Russian language and it means tent in tartar. So the thought obviously is that perhaps these roofs were suggested this way by the tents of the tartars when they were occupying Russia during those long centuries in the Middle Ages, the whole end is crowned with a dome. This was a very fine example. I don't know whether it is still in existence but it had not been ceased on the outside of our exterior protection at the time it was photographed about 1900 and it still has its very fine single roof.
Now, this kind of design is so-called tent church was very much beloved by the people, the land owners and so on out of the countryside and gradually it infiltrated the form infiltrated the architecture of the (inaudible 49:24) which is near Moscow. This beautiful church is still in existence. This is made of brick which then white washed a little more like stone, but the shape of the church is obviously based upon the octagonal form of the tents of the wooden tent churches of the north. It has been the addition of those (inaudible 49:48) I showed you a moment ago, a very fine masonry tent above it. So you see here the ancient wooden form transforms now into the masonry and you find it here later on now we are in the 16th Century middle of the 16th Century, the Church of Giokaval which is also near Moscow and which was erected as a dedicatory church or expiatory church for dedication for the fulfillment of the bow but some of the earlier Romanovs before they had married in family of the Ivan they fought so then Romanovs eventually descended. This very peculiar church now in brick a polychrome brick shows the introduction of Italian forums is depressed and rather dumpy and short of culinary like elements, (inaudible 50:51), the paneling of the walls, the dress of renaissance architecture and now having watch the wooden forum change itself into masonry. You now see the masonry changing itself into renaissance type design. And of course what I am leading up to perhaps some of you realize is the church of Saint Basal the blessed Red Sqaure in Moscow.
Here is one of the 17th Century towers of the Kremlin which was build by an English pluck maker who made that pluck. He designed the tower will go into it which still survives and survived of fire, water and so on and this is the main ceremonial entrance into the Kremlin. Now the church of Saint Basal was build by Ivan the Terrible and it's form seems to outrageous to Europeans that they began circulating the Colombia and Ivan had an architects in blind in order to that they might never create anything like it again. You see it's not to be prove at all and the church far from being outrageous or bizarre, it's actually extremely logical. It consists of a tent church as you can see right there surrounded by eight chapels each of which plays variation for form a theme of the tent church. And all of them, all of these subsidiary chapels should end in this tent like form. But in the 17th Century, they were given church has been still incomplete. They were given these sort of polish baroque type bulbous domes in a very extravagant shape which don't really belong. Of course the whole thing has been there so long we accept it as the unity, but it's rather like sharp where the two towers don't match and should, they tear down the one or the other since they have no intention of doing but they bring the whole thing into harmony but we accept the disharmony -- through this visual consensus or the same is true here. The church is very simply an outgrowth of an architectural logic which though extravagant to our eyes particularly natural to the Russians, it's greatest extravagance is in the polychrome because the renaissance having dug up so much architecture and sculpture from which the color had been washed. So it chose to create sculpture and architecture in whites and grays. The Russians love the use of brilliant vivid colors inset with glazed tiles as on the roof and so on which play against the white snows of winter in a very lively and agreeable way.
Well, that is the culminating monument let us say of Muscabide, Russia. The Russia of Tsar. In the 17th Century and the 17th Century began with the time of troubles when the succession was protested by Boris Godunov who was boy of a noble but not a royal blood and then finally after his defeat, a descendent of Ivan the IV and the female line descended to thrown as Alexis the First Romanov and by that time Boris Godunov created this Bell Tower in the Kremlin, this very tall structure which lends its characteristic profile from Moscow's skyline as the contrary buildings coming step in kind of symbolic of ancient Russia, but if you look very carefully you will find that this is the most undistinguished building. It is not the handsome it does only commanding, there is that clock tower or English the clock tower at church of Saint Basal and David Duncan and his photograph is against is against very threatening but it is very handsomely impressive arrangement. In the 17th Century there was a terrible dispute religious dispute between the patriotic Nikon and the faithful believers of the church. The patriots wanted the church reformed. He wanted it to go back to Greek principles and he insisted that all churches be built according to the canonical Greek system which we followed from Kiev through Vladimir to the Dormition in the Kremlin which is just around corner here, and to the palace church itself his own church which opened off the Tsar palace, which has the canonical five domes and so on that is not ancient, that is only mid 17th Century very late. The old believers who wanted to go on with the literature as had that developed this all kinds of changes and errors having crept in we are denounced by Nikon. They have principally in the outside regions and in the far north. They were desperately prosecuted and rather than yield sometimes they would gather themselves inside their ancient wooden churches and set ---

Publisher (Electronic Version)

Archives and Manuscripts Collections, The Baltimore Museum of Art;

Holding Institution

Baltimore Museum of Art;

Date Original

1967-05-23

Date Digital

2011

Type

Sound;

Format

Digital reproduction of one sound tape reel, 56 minutes, 21 seconds

Source

Audiovisual Collection, AV.RR.14.B

Coverage (Time Period)

1961-1970;

Rights

Permission to reproduce this item is required and may be subject to copyright, fees, and other legal restrictions. For more information, please contact: E. Kirkbride Miller Art Research Library, Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, (443) 573-1778, bmalibrary@artbma.org